“And behold, I am with you always…” (Matthew 28:20)
What a comforting promise the
Lord gives us at the end of today’s gospel.
This week, many of you came and participated in our 40 Hour Devotion of
Adoration to the Blessed Sacrament. Our
Lord was present in our chapel and was never alone. The amount of people that came, especially in
the overnight hours, was incredible. On Friday
night, when I gave Benediction and reposed the Lord, I told everyone present that
now that we had concluded the 40 Hour Devotion and enjoyed his presence among
us, we had to take his presence into the world.
This is, in part, what we celebrate today with the Solemnity of the
Ascension. Cardinal Dolan tweeted this
week, that “today we are not celebrating Jesus leaving us—what we are
celebrating is that He remains with us always!”
Despite leaving the sight of the disciples, he promises his
presence. The problem for us is that we
often forget that he walks with us in our journey.
So many of us have walked into
this church today with problems and stress and anxieties. We often complain that God has abandoned
us. He’s not there. He has forgotten us. But right there at the very end of the Gospel
of Matthew is a promise: “I am with you
always.” God, by his very nature, cannot
lie. He assures us of his presence, and
this should be of tremendous comfort to us.
Therefore, as I have invited you to do before, cast off your problems
and place them in the hands of our Lord.
Today he becomes our Great Mediator.
He will take on your burdens. He
will walk with you in your troubles. He
is with us especially in this Eucharist.
We need his presence because we cannot journey through this life alone. During
my last Mass today, I asked the people if we could take on our problems on our
own, and a little girl sitting to my left vigorously shook her head NO! If a little girl can figure out how much we
need God’s presence in our life, why can’t we?
Probably because we like to be independent. We like to do things on our own. Except that life has taught me all too well
that whenever I set off on my own, I end up falling flat on my face. But there is Jesus dusting me off, picking me
up, and pointing me in the right direction.
Give your troubles to Jesus this day. Do not walk out of here burdened. Christ makes us free, and his presence gives
us overwhelming peace as we all discovered during those 40 hours.
And when we carry no burden, we can act on that final command that Jesus gave his disciples to go to all nations to spread the Good News. Essentially it’s to do what I told those gathered late Friday night: once we surrender to our Lord, we can start to freely and joyfully share his presence with the world. He is with us always until the end.
